An illiberal democracy, also called a partial democracy, low intensity democracy, empty democracy, hybrid regime or guided democracy,[1] is a governing system in which, although elections take place, citizens are cut off from knowledge about the activities of those who exercise real power because of the lack of civil liberties. It is not an "open society". There are many countries "that are categorized as neither 'free' nor 'not free', but as 'probably free', falling somewhere between democratic and nondemocratic regimes".[2] This may be because a constitution limiting government powers exists, but those in power ignore its liberties, or because an adequate legal constitutional framework of liberties does not exist.[3]

According to Zakaria, illiberal democracies are increasing around the world and are increasingly limiting the freedoms of the people they represent. Zakaria points out that in the West, electoral democracy and civil liberties (of speech, religion, etc.) go hand in hand. But around the world, the two concepts are coming apart. He argues that democracy without constitutional liberalism is producing centralized regimes, the erosion of liberty, ethnic competition, conflict, and war. Recent scholarship has addressed why elections, institutions commonly associated with liberalism and freedom, have led to such negative outcomes in illiberal democracies. Hybrid regimes are political systems in which the mechanism for determining access to state office combines both democratic and autocratic practices. In hybrid regimes, freedoms exist and the opposition is allowed to compete in elections, but the system of checks and balances becomes inoperative

Zakaria's definition was promoted by Hungarian prime ministerViktor Orbán in 2014, who made the concept central to the creation of his own party, Fidesz. He claimed that the party's goal was to create "an illiberal state, a non-liberal state [that] does not reject the fundamental principles of liberalism such as freedom, and I could list a few more, but it does not make this ideology the central element of state organisation, but instead includes a different, special, national approach." He claimed that his form of "illiberal democracy" disdained toleration of minorities, believed in strong forms of majoritarianism, rejected checks and balances, and believed in nationalism and separatism. Indeed, he rewrote the Hungarian Constitution to reflect Fidesz's illiberal values, and has an authoritarian-like hold on Hungary, according to Freedom House.[original research?]

Jennifer Gandhi argues that many autocrats allow elections in their governance to stabilize and reinforce their regimes. She first argues that elections help leaders resolve threats from elites and from the masses by appeasing those capable of usurping power with money and securing the cooperation of the general public with political concessions.[5] Gandhi also claims that illiberal elections serve other useful purposes, such as providing autocrats with information about their citizens and establishing legitimacy both domestically and in the international community, and that these varied functions must be elucidated in future research.[6] One example of the regime durability provided by illiberal democracy is illustrated in Mubarak’s Egyptian regime. Lisa Blaydes shows that under Mubarak’s lengthy rule, elections provided a mechanism through which elites bought votes to support the government (through distributing needed goods and resources to the public) to acquire regime-enforced parliamentary immunity. This enabled them to accumulate illicit wealth and draw from state resources without legal consequence.[7] Such research suggests that, given the stability-providing function of illiberal elections, states governed under illiberal democracies may have low prospects for a transition to a democratic system protected by constitutional liberties.

There is a spectrum of illiberal democracies: from those that are nearly liberal democracies to those that are almost openly dictatorships. One proposed method of determining whether a regime is an illiberal democracy is to determine whether "it has regular, free, fair, and competitive elections to fill the principal positions of power in the country, but it does not qualify as Free in Freedom House's annual ratings of civil liberties and political rights."[9] A 2008 article by Rocha Menocal, Fritz and Rakner describes the emergence of illiberal democracies and discusses some of their shared characteristics.[10]

In a 2014 speech, after the re-election, Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary described his views about the future of Hungary as an "illiberal state". In his interpretation the "illiberal state" does not reject the values of the liberal democracy, but does not adopt it as a central element of state organisation.[11] Orbán listed Singapore, Russia, Turkey, and China as examples of “successful” nations, “none of which is liberal and some of which aren’t even democracies.”[12]

The Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin has also been described as an illiberal democracy. Elections take place regularly, but many foreign observers (e.g. from the OSCE) do not consider them free or fair. The rate at which journalists have been murdered in Russia shows the limits of freedom of speech; most major television networks and newspapers are state-owned or influenced by the government and openly support parties that support the government during elections.[13][14] Russia had also moved towards a period of democracy in the early 1990s, but whilst elections remain in place, state control of media is increasing and opposition is difficult.[15]

A classic example of an illiberal democracy is Singapore.[16] During the leadership of Lee Kwan Yew, Singapore acquired full independence, first from Britain and then from Malaysia in the 1960s. At that time, it was structured as a relatively liberal democracy, albeit with some internal security laws that allowed for detention without trial. Over time, as Singapore's ruling People's Action Party government consolidated power in the 1960s and 1970s, it enacted a number of laws and policies that curtailed constitutional freedoms (such as the right to assemble or form associations, bearing in mind that there were race and religious riots at these times), and extended its influence over the media, unions, NGOs and academia. Consequently, although technically free and fair multi-party elections are regularly conducted, the political realities in Singapore (including fear and self-censorship) make participation in opposition politics extremely difficult, leaving the dominant ruling party as the only credible option at the polls.

In a 2015 CNN reportage, Zakaria said that Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdogan has become a textbook case of illiberal democracy.[17] Erik Meyersson observes that using Freedom House’s measure of liberty, Turkey took the last place among electoral democracies in 2015, scoring worse on the liberty measure than some countries that are not even considered electoral democracies.[18] Using the same Freedom House' liberty measure, Honduras, Bangladesh and Pakistan were the next three most illiberal democracies (in this order). Meyersson also notes that despite Hungary's self-declared illberalism, it ranked no worse than Bulgaria and ahead of Serbia using Freedom House' liberty measure.[18]

Writers such as Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way reject the concept of an illiberal democracy, saying it only "muddies the waters" on the basis that if a country does not have opposition parties and an independent media, it is not democratic.[19] They argue that terms like "illiberal democracy" are inappropriate for some of these states, because the term implies that these regimes are, at their heart, democracies that have gone wrong. Levitsky and Way argue that states such as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia under Slobodan Milošević, Zimbabwe, and post-Soviet Russia, were never truly democratic and not developing toward democracy, but were rather tending toward authoritarian behavior, despite having elections (which were sometimes sharply contested). Thus, Levitsky and Way coined a new term to remove the positive connotation of democracy from these states and distinguish them from flawed or developing democracies: competitive authoritarianism.[20]

According to a study by George Washington University political scientist Michael K. Miller, multiparty autocratic elections predict significantly better outcomes on health, education, gender equality, and basic freedoms relative to non-electoral autocracy. Effects on health and education are as strong as those of democracy and are significantly better than in non-electoral autocracy.[21]

^"In political theory, an illiberal democracy is defined as one that only pays attention to elections, while it violates, in the years between elections, some core democratic principles, especially freedom of expression": Narendra Modi’s illiberal drift threatens Indian democracy, Financial Times, 18 August 2017.